Otisco Lake 11/14
I got out on my own on Otisco Lake today. The goal was to get a Tiger Musky on the fly. I fly-fished hard from around 6:45 am till around 12:15, then I did some gear fishing until around 3 (not just for Tigers.) I never raised a musky. I did land a chunky 18″ smallmouth bass on my streamer, missed another and had a couple bass follows on streamers (jerkbait anyone?). The highpoint of the morning was watching a (!) school of at least 3 nice sized brown trout – fish in the mid-20s inch range follow in my streamer. So there are some nice browns in this lake. I saw one other boat on the lake trolling. Hard to figure what was up. I worked from the shallows (5′) out to around 18′ or 20′ with streamers. I fished good musky areas – at least we did well during the summer and fall in these places AND fish are caught through the ice in these areas. There was a full-moon on the 13th, so maybe a lot of the muskies fed at night. Maybe my flies weren’t running deep enough, weren’t big enough or I wasn’t in the right areas. Who knows? But I found out what didn’t work! Water temps were at 49/50 – very warm for this time of year.